FIRST, a public service announcement, one that I seem to feel obliged to make at least once a year. It is the time of the year here in the Philippines when health experts (and naturally, the drug store chains that sell most of the shots) urge people to get their annual influenza vaccination. If you’re like me, someone of the “at your age” age — meaning that many people will tell you, “at your age, you should be careful about (insert name of common ailment or health concern here)” — this is especially important, as contracting the flu can have dire consequences.
I’m reminded to point this out now because my “I’ll go get my flu shot in the next week or so” plan did not work, and I am apparently going to spend the next few days trying, without the benefit of modern medicine, to rid myself of whatever flavor of pestilence is going to be most prevalent this year. I’m not particularly worried about it, although I’m told that, “at my age,” I ought to be. The usual remedies of soup, Bioflu, lemon tea, gin, and bed rest seem to be preventing it from becoming any more unpleasant than it already is. But it is a good reminder that may not always be the case, and an ounce of prevention in the form of a flu shot will always be better than a pound of cure, especially if that cure turns out to not exist.
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It is the July 4th weekend, which is always an occasion for summer festivities in the United States. But this year takes on an added significance, as it marks the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence of the original 13 colonies from Great Britain. Even if I were not feeling under the weather (or, as I’ve been telling my kids, “I’m dying and no one cares”), I would not be inclined to celebrate the occasion as I have in years past, for sociopolitical reasons that I do not wish to get into right now. Perhaps, I will celebrate next year, or the year after, when there seems to be something about America worth celebrating.
It is, perhaps, that reluctance to feel good about the holiday that has inspired me to reflect on how the significance and relevance of such occasions shifts over time, and how such momentous dates are really quite arbitrary.
July 4, 1776 was, in no sense, the “birthday” of the United States of America as we know it now. The date marks the day the Declaration of Independence was adopted by the 13 British American colonies in the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia. It was published on July 6, and then read out to the public on July 8. On July 2, two days prior to the adoption of the Declaration, the Congress unanimously passed the Lee Resolution, which was a declaration that the British Crown no longer held governing authority over the colonies.
Fun fact: The author of the Lee Resolution, Richard Henry Lee of Virginia, was the cousin of the outstanding Revolutionary War general (but otherwise a complete failure in his personal life) Henry “Lighthorse Harry” Lee III, whose son Robert E. Lee was the leading general of the Confederate States of America a little less than a century later. Robert, in turn, was married to the great-granddaughter of Martha Washington, the wife of the first US president.
At the time of the Declaration of Independence, the rebellion of the colonies against Great Britain had been going on, in a more or less formal way, for more than a year. The twin battles of Lexington and Concord, near Boston, Massachusetts, which are generally accepted as the first actions in the Revolutionary War because they pitted regular British troops against colonial militia, occurred on April 21, 1775.
And of course, simply declaring independence on July 4, 1776, didn’t mean independence in fact for what would eventually become the United States; an entire war lasting five years, which the Americans came very close to losing on a number of occasions, would still be fought. The Revolutionary War would not effectively end until the surrender of British general Charles Cornwallis to the combined American-French force under Washington at Yorktown, Virginia, on Oct. 19, 1781.
The independence of the American colonies from Great Britain would not be formally secured for almost another two years, with the signing of the (second) Treaty of Paris on Sept. 3, 1783. The United States would not formally exist as a country in a form recognizable to us today until either Sept. 17, 1787, or June 21, 1788, depending on which historian you ask. Sept. 17 was the date it was adopted by the delegates to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia; June 21 was the date it legally entered into force, after its ratification by the ninth (out of 13) state, New Hampshire. Of the remaining four states, New York and Virginia followed New Hampshire a few days later, but North Carolina and Rhode Island would not ratify the Constitution until November 1789 and May 1790, respectively.
What has always fascinated me from a historical perspective is how innocuous the July 4 date as a significant marker in America’s timeline actually is. The date marking “the birth of the United States” could have just as easily been April 21, July 2, Oct. 19, June 21, Sept. 3, Sept. 17, or June 21. Or, for that matter, April 9, April 26 or Aug. 20; these dates mark the surrender of General Lee to General Grant and General Johnston to General Sherman in 1865, and the formal declaration of the cessation of hostilities in the American Civil War in 1866. All of these dates could be argued as the beginning of the modern American empire, the guise of the US that has had the most impact on the Philippines and the rest of the world.
History is wonderfully messy.
Bluesky: @benkritz.bsky.social
Website: www.badmannersgunclub.com